A Chinese restaurant owner sparked outrage on social media after she was found serving meals containing pet food to her customers.
According to Otago Daily Times, the Hong Kong Restaurant located in Invercargill, New Zealand, had been serving their customers chicken feet – a pet food labeled unsafe for human consumption.
The meal in question is prepared by removing the bones and cooking the gelatinous flesh of the paw.
After the reports of the restaurant selling the controversial dish emerged online, owner Lisa Wang admitted to serving it to the customers.
However, she claimed that the dish was only being served to those people who asked for it.
Speaking to Otago Daily Times, she explained that the controversial meal is a proper Chinese dish called tuo gu ji zhua. She added that the dish was being made for the Chinese people as well as for her own intake.
“In Invercargill there aren’t too many Chinese shops, and they really want to have this and tell us to get them if we can,” Lisa said.
“It is one of our cultural foods, if it wasn’t edible for human consumption we wouldn’t be selling it.”
According to the Food Safety Plan of City Counsel, the food which is made and kept at a restaurant must be intended for just customers’ intake.
Ann Thompson, senior environmental Health Officer at Invercargill City Council, paid a visit to the restaurant as soon as she heard about the controversy.
“We reminded the operator that, as per their food control plan, the only food that should be stored and prepared on site is food which is for sale to customers,” she said.
Ann said that there was nothing to be worried about as she had examined each and everything in the restaurant.
She added that the restaurant had also been issued the status of ‘acceptable’ during its inspection before.
Speaking to Stuff, Lisa said she will stop selling tuo gu ji zhua to her customers in the future, and that she will prepare the dish in her home instead of the restaurant for personal consumption.